How Jack & Sam Spent Their Honeymoon
by Majikthize
Summary: The title pretty much says it all but, it’s probably not quite how you’d imagine it. Needless to say there’s no mention of beaches and bikinis…or wait…yes there is! Sam / Jack established relationship. Humour/romance and just a smidgen of angst.


Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. This work was created for love not money. No infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended.

Author's Notes: This turned out a bit longer than I anticipated, despite my paring it down considerably. I couldn't take more out without losing all Jack's good lines! I did toy with the idea of making it part of a larger story but that could take me years.

Happy Valenship Sam Jack Shipper Family (((((Family))))

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The guards pushed them roughly along the corridor. Either side of them was dank stone, sometimes visibly dripping with moisture and green with slime where the flickering torches managed to illuminate. Cold pervaded everywhere.

Jack sighed theatrically.

"What?" Sam whispered and received a shove to her back from one of the three armed men escorting them.

Jack glanced at her and whispered back, "Aren't we there yet?" He got a shove for his efforts too.

"Silence!" An oh-so-cliché bad guy responded icily.

Sam and Jack rolled their eyes at each other. "Oh for cryin' out…" Another shove to his back and this time hard enough to make Jack stumble. Sam's hand shot out automatically to steady him but he needed no help. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod of thanks anyway.

They rounded a corner and, set into one stone wall, there was a heavy looking door with a small metal grate at head height. Clearly it was some kind of prison cell. Two days rough marching over rocky terrain and through thick forest to get to this. Just peachy, Jack thought.

A rough shove and they were pushed towards the open door into a room that was, if possible even gloomier and more damp than the rest of the fortress. They were thrust into almost pitch blackness they both stumbled, grabbing for each other as they took a moment to get their bearings.

"Hey" Jack called out turning to face their captors letting the little light available from beyond the door spill over him. "Didn't I reserve the honeymoon suite?" He added with an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

Sam smirked but Jack got the butt of the guard's weapon across his nose; the force of the blow making him unbalance and land on his ass.

"Ow!" He grabbed his nose as blood gushed forth. Sam was immediately at his side, one hand on his shoulder alternatively looking at him with a mix of concern and exasperation and simultaneously shooting daggers at the guards. Jack waved her concern away.

"Your insolence will only make your suffering all the more satisfying." The chief bad guy intoned, his voice dripping with typical bad guy cliché menace. "I look forward to hearing your screams for mercy." He turned; with an appraising look at Sam and a flick of his cape, he was gone. The door was slammed shut and the ominous sound of a very heavy bolt being drawn and locked in place echoed through the metal.

"Great!" Jack mumbled accepting Sam's help to get to his feet and wincing slightly as various body parts protested. He looked around in the darkness. "Not even a fruit basket!"

It got the desired response from Sam whose worried face relaxed into an almost smile. "Well, at least it's just us two. We don't know what happened to the others. I'm gonna assume they're somewhere organising a rescue as we speak."

"I've never been a fan of sitting on my ass, waiting, Carter."

"I know." She responded, peeling his hand away from his nose and prodded it gently herself, "Don't think it's broken."

"Ow!" He pulled away from her, "It will be if you keep poking it." Irritation flashed over his face.

"Sorry." She grimaced. The darkness was becoming slightly less deep as their eyes adjusted. "Not sure what else we can do right now though."

Jack looked around in the gloom, "Let's check this place out?" Jack replied.

Sam wrinkled her nose, "It has an interesting aroma."

"What aroma?"

"That…" She glanced at his nose, now swelling nicely but at least now the bleeding was easing up. "…oh, I guess you can't smell much."

"Remind me to send a thank you note to Mister Overblown Overdressed out there."

"Yeah, well- " She nodded and glanced around in the gloom, "-you're lucky, trust me." She wrinkled her nose again and in the moment of silence they heard the sound of water trickling and, more disturbingly, the sound of scratching. Sam's eyes widened. Jack immediately fell back on his training and motioned to Sam who seamlessly interpreted his order. They split up to investigate.

The cell was large and deep, the back wall being nearly twenty feet from the door and about as wide. Not that it mattered in this darkness as they couldn't make out much anyway. The small square of dim light that made its way through the grate on the door did little to illuminate the room. Sam found out where both the smell and the noises were coming from simultaneously. "Urgh!"

"What?" Jack asked, whispering urgently for no reason and coming alongside her quickly.

"I found the latrine…so to speak." She looked down at what she'd stepped in. What is best described as an open sewer ran under a small hole in the stone wall one side of the cell, across the back and back under into the next cell. Dirty, smelly water and dark shapes that didn't bear scrutiny trickled along it. Sam shook her foot and scraped it against the stone floor to dislodge anything unpleasant that was on her boot. "And the local wildlife."

"Let me guess; rats?" Jack asked coming to stand alongside her.

Sam nodded. "Or at least rodent like things. I saw one go through there." She indicated to the small gap, barely visible in the scant light that bled through the door grate. She took a step back and something clattered beneath her boot. Jack raised his eyebrows in question and Sam returned the look. She turned and bent to inspect whatever it was she'd stepped on. She reached out to touch…. and then straightened up very quickly, the look on her face betraying her distress.

"What?" He asked with concern, and subconsciously placed a hand on her arm.

"Uh, bones." The distaste on her face said it all. "Maybe human?"

Jack couldn't resist the need to check for himself. He bent, reached for the pale shapes and prodded them. "Yep, definitely human or humanoid anyway. Picked clean by the looks of it." He added, quashing his own distaste; picking up one of the longer, more intact bones and musing over the possibilities of using it as a tool or weapon somehow.

"By the rats, I expect." Sam supplied.

He struck the bone against the floor, testing its strength and it crumbled leaving his hand coated in a slimy dust. "Eww" He said as he stood up quickly and nonchalantly wiped his grimy hand against his pants leg. "That's…comforting."

"Yeah." Sam still looked a little spooked. "I have a bad feeling about this."

Jack frowned, not wanting to voice his own concerns. He tilted his head and bent to inspect the hole that the sewer ran through into the next room. "I don't suppose we could make that hole any bigger?" He pointed, drawing Sam's attention away from the remains.

"With what? They took all our gear." She replied forlornly.

"Do you have a hair pin?" He gestured towards her hair.

"I have a hair _band_!" She responded, brushing back the strands that had long since escaped her braid.

"Hmm, not much chiselling doing with that."

"It only leads to the next cell anyway."

"Eventually it has to lead out of this place, right?" He glanced at the wall in thought.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, if we ever managed to chisel a hole big enough for us to slip through. Then we'd probably have to do it again through who knows how many walls before we end up in as sewer full of rats and sh…"

"And sitting on our asses doing nothing, like that guy- " He pointed to the pile of bones behind her, " -is a better idea, Carter?"

Sam bit her lip, suitably admonished. Two days marching across rough terrain with nothing but a couple of slices of stale bread and even staler water past her lips had made her somewhat cranky, not to mention rather pessimistic. "Sorry, Sir." She responded.

"Sir?" He repeated, genuinely surprised.

"Sorry…felt like old times there for a minute." She added a weak smile.

"Yes. Unfortunately." He sighed deeply, "And this was supposed to be a diplomatic soiree. No danger, just smiling a lot and a nice buffet if I recall."

"Yeah, the catering wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be." She allowed a small smile.

"Well." He gestured to the room in general, "Retirement's turning out to be less relaxing that I realised too right now."

Sam sighed. "Sorry. We knew this mission would fall after you officially retired and I argued the case against you having to come but you know the D'ranyens; they can be pretty insistent about protocol. They were quite taken with you when you first negotiated the agreement back then."

Negotiating wasn't strictly what he'd done, he recalled. He'd charmed and flirted with the ladies while Daniel did all the actual talking but he'd obviously made an impression. Not that it helped their situation now. "Well, I seem to have fallen out of favour somewhat in the intervening years." He muttered sarcastically.

She bit her lip. "All the same, I should have been more…"

He interrupted with a hand on her arm, "Oh don't start playing the blame game, Carter, you know as well as I do I was looking forward to it. When was the last time I got to go through the gate?"

"True." She nodded conceding the point.

"And anyway it's been, what, at least seven years we've been trading with them and they've never pulled a stunt like this before. This was meant to be a celebration of our long standing alliance, for cryin' out loud, not- " He gestured to their dark cell. " -honeymoon at the Addams family mansion"

She smirked in appreciation of his attempts at levity. "Yeah. I guess the trade agreement's off then." She returned her focus to the problem at hand and glanced around their cell, carefully avoiding looking towards the pile of bones. "So what now?"

Jack sucked in a breath, "Well, escape via the sewer can be Plan A but…let's hold out for Plan B, huh?"

"What's Plan B?"

He blew out a breath. "Not actually worked the details of that out yet." He shot her an apologetic smile and glanced upwards and his face changed to one of thoughtful curiosity as he saw something, "Although…how about escape through the skylight there?" He pointed upwards and Sam followed his finger and saw the small dark shadow, barely distinguishable from the surrounding stone wall. The ceiling was vaulted and it was half way down the slope, at least fifteen feet above them. "Ya think?" He asked.

Sam tilted her head to one side studying the skylight. "Maybe. It's not barred but it's pretty small and I'm not sure we could reach."

Jack was eyeing her speculatively, "You know, it might be a squeeze but you could probably just about fit through, right? If you took off your jacket and you don't have your vest anymore so …uh… well…" He did a sort of little wriggling motion that she took to suggest she could use to work her way through the aperture.

Sam looked back at the hole, trying to gauge, as best she could in the darkness, whether she could. "Maybe…"

"And I could boost you up? Maybe there's something just outside that you can hook your jacket round and hoist yourself up and out?"

"And how do you get out?" She asked the obvious question.

"Well, you go get help… or a chisel…" He continued, almost oblivious to her interruption.

"Uhuh…" She shook her head with a deep set frown.

"…or better still, some C4…" He continued, heedlessly.

"No!" She grabbed his arms and spun him to face her; her features drawn and hard.

"Excuse me?" He exclaimed, somewhat taken aback and still not used to her defying his orders even though, unofficially she'd not been taking orders off him for a long time and now, officially, he couldn't give them anymore anyway.

Her expression softened into an almost apology. "I'm not going anywhere without you."

"Carter." He warned.

She sighed and she dropped her hands to her sides. "Look, I'm not ready to be a widow quite so soon." She gave him a wry smile but the humour didn't quite reach her eyes. She sighed and looked up at the skylight again. "And anyway, even if I took off every layer of clothing I'm wearing and did naked star jumps off your shoulders I doubt I could reach. "

Jack sighed. He was definitely rubbing off on her. "As…wonderful, as that mental image is, you're probably right. Back to Plan A then. Or come up with something new."

Sam searched around with her eyes. "On the plus side, having a window means we'll get some light in a few hours when the moons start to rise. Maybe with a little light we might find something more useful in here. Stuff must get washed down that sewer."

"Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that." He grimaced now, clearly not happy with the thought of picking through the waste that found its way through. "Meanwhile, let's see if there's a handy rope and grappling hook lying around here somewhere."

-

LATER

-

Jack slouched with his back to the wall, legs out in front stretched along the bed he'd found on their second pass round the cell. Well, he assumed it was a bed as it certainly beat the cold, hard, stone floor but really, it was little more than a large, flat straw sack; certainly no match for the king sized mattress and satin sheets they'd be checking out in the beach hut they should be in right about now. The straw was damp and slightly mouldy and he'd been stationary long enough for it to have started to seep through the seat of his pants. Their search of the cell had thrown up nothing more of interest except another set of human remains even more decayed than the first. After that they'd given up until moonrise and decided to get some long needed rest.

Sam lay half beside him and half on him; her head resting somewhere between his lap and his chest and her arms around him, which wasn't entirely unpleasant despite the severity of their situation. His butt was numb (and now cold and damp) and his back ached with the odd angle he was propped up at but he was too tired to move. The only sounds in the cell were the slow trickle and drip of water and the faint scratching of the rats; a sound which, knowing about the previous occupants of the cell, Jack found particularly disturbing.

Sam sighed, twisted and sat up. "This definitely isn't as comfortable as the brochure described." She said, echoing his own thoughts.

"I'll be sure to draft a letter of complaint to the tour agent when we get back." Jack replied, straightening up and wincing at all the aches. He was sure moisture from the walls had dripped down his back inside his shirt. At least he hoped that's what was trickling down his back.

"I'm starving" Sam said. Her stomach growled on cue.

"Don't think this place has room service. They didn't feed those guys by the looks of it." He gestured to the opposite side of the cell, glad that the darkness obscured the bones he knew were there.

"What happened to last meal of the condemned prisoner?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, I don't think they signed that treaty either." He paused for a beat. "We could always eat the rats y'know?"

"What, before they eat us?" She questioned.

He shrugged, "Don't think it'll come to that. If we don't find a way out before daybreak, we'll be hauled outta here for… uh… the usual torture by cliché session no doubt. Not that I'm overly comforted by that thought."

"What do you suppose they want?" She asked the question he'd been wondering about for nearly three days.

Jack shrugged, "Personally, I'd rather we get outta here before we get a chance to find out."

"Yeah." Sam bit her lip and looked away from him and paused for a long moment. "You know, torture and beatings I can handle. That guy that brought us down here? The one with the cape? I…I didn't like the way he was looking at me." She met Jack's serious gaze, her meaning written all over her features.

"No, me neither." He felt her fear coiling with his own and put an arm around her, pulling her back against his shoulder.

The worry was still etched on her face. "It's… it's not like that's never been a concern for me before but…"

"Carter!" His voice sounded harsh and full of annoyance even to him so he deliberately softened it. "Sam. Let's…not go there shall we?"

She shot him a significant look and nodded in agreement, and then in change of subject said with a weak smile, "Some honeymoon this is turning out to be."

He grasped at her humour like a lifeline. "I told ya! We shoulda blown off this diplomatic thing and got straight on that plane."

"Well, to be fair this mission was planned ages ago and it's us that kind of scheduled ourselves around it at short notice." She supplied.

"Hey, you're the one who wanted a short engagement." He countered.

"I was thinking a little longer than a week!" She shot him an amused look.

Jack shrugged. "I retired, I proposed. You said yes. What you think I was gonna _wait_ after all this time?"

Sam gave a short laugh. "No, I guess not. I'm not complaining either."

"It was a great wedding." Jack replied with a smile. "Honeymoon? Not so much."

Sam smiled at him, "Yeah."

"Not even a mini bar." He blew an annoyed puff of air out of his mouth.

Sam suppressed a giggle and glanced down at her bare fingers. "I'm kind of glad I didn't wear my ring. They probably would have taken that and I'd feel dreadful losing it so soon."

"Yes. Bad guys and bling. What is it with that?" He felt smug and happy despite their dire situation. "Next time - not that there will be a next time but - we do not go to some stupid alien shindig, we do not pass go. We do not collect two hundred dollars. We get hitched, we go straight to the airport, straight on the plane and…" He made a zooming gesture with his free hand.

Sam nodded "Agreed. Not, as you say, that there'll be a next time." She paused for a moment and then added. "Unless we ever renew our vows, I guess."

"What in case we forget them? That's never gonna happen." He frowned in thought, "Alien influences, mind stamps and serious head trauma aside and, frankly…now I mention it, that's…not entirely unheard of in our…your line of work."

She snorted suppressing her laughter. "Well, some people renew their vows just for affirmation; after life changing events, near death experiences, that sort of thing." She speculated.

"God, Carter if we followed that rule we'd be renewing every other damn week!"

Sam let the laughter bubble to the surface this time. "Yeah." She tilted her head onto his shoulder reaching up to find his hand around her shoulders and lacing her fingers with his. "It could be worse."

He shot her a glance. "Still. I'd rather be somewhere hot on a beach and you wearing a tiny little bikini." His heated look passed up and down her body leaving her in no doubt what he was thinking.

Colour suffused her cheeks; a reaction that was oddly misplaced given their intimacy. She gave him a coy smile then looked away.

He raised his eyebrows, noticing. "I'm sorry am I _embarrassing_ you?"

"As much as I appreciate the attention, this is hardly the time and place for that."

"No I should think not!" Jack reached his free hand across and brushed a strand of her hair back from her face. "Although…" He gave her a devilish look again and let his hand linger just a fraction too long across her cheek. "How long before moonrise?"

She laughed again and shook her head. "You're incorrigible."

"And _that's_ why you married me." He grinned with cockiness.

She snuggled closer. "One of your many unique qualities, yes." Then she stifled a big yawn.

He could feel her tiredness in the set of her shoulders and his own weariness too. He turned his head towards hers and pressed his lips to her hair. "Get some rest Carter. Until moonrise."

A moment of silence passed before she spoke again. "You know this, find a chisel and carve our way out of here plan won't really work don't you?"

"Now you're being pessimistic again."

"Sorry." She settled back against the wall and allowed him to pull her close again.

"Get some rest."

"Yes Sir." She responded with a yawn and he didn't bother to correct her.

-

LATER STILL

-

"Jack?"

"Mmm?" He mumbled, barely awake.

"Just for the record. What plan was get rescued?"

"Huh?" He asked confused.

"Get rescued? It is even in the plan?"

He thought for a moment, the fog of sleep still crowding his brain but then he got it. "C. It's plan C."

"Good."

"Why?"

"Plan C it is then." She nudged him slightly and he came fully awake in an instant.

"What?" He asked with more spirit.

"Plan C. The cavalry's here." She pointed towards the skylight the rope being lowered through it.

"Oh thank heavens. Take me to a beach."

"Well we're not home yet." She warned.

"Ah!" He waggled his finger at her. "Semantics. We're going home, and then I'm having a long hot shower, preferably with you. And then we're going on our honeymoon, a little later than advertised, but, when we get there we're not leaving our room for at least three days." He grinned.

She grinned into his shoulder. "Sounds like a plan to me."

He smiled again, with a hint of devilishness. "Plan F!"

She laughed, and despite the fact they'd agreed to keep it strictly professional at work, she sat up and surprised him by straddling his lap and dropping a kiss onto his startled mouth. "Tahiti here we come." She whispered against his lips, and kissed him again.

-

End

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End file.
